Page 167 of As the Rain Falls
“Yes.” Angelina swallows hard. “I’m not allowed to stop.”
My gaze softens. “Are the meds working?”
“Not that well. There are too many.” She hides her face from me, hiccups getting lower. “Antipsychotics. Mood stabilizers. Anti-seizure medication because I’m prone to-to ha-having those. It’s like I’m high every fucking day.”
“Jesus,” I blurt out.
She’s definitely not responding as she should. If anything, her medication seems to be making her feel worse. “I—I hate taking them. I want to stop. But Dad had to-to do so much work to get them.”
My heart drops.
I’ve always known her family’s struggles.I just didn’t think this would weigh on her like this. Knowing there’s not much I can do to fix this, I focus on driving us back to her house.Angelina only calms down after the cemetery is completely out of sight.
The absurdity of the situation reminds me of something, a small detail I’ve been keeping in the back of my mind for the longest time possible. I do everything to keep myself from talking about my neighbor these days, but she keeps effortlessly showing up in every single one of my thoughts.
It’s really hard not to think about her.
“You know, you sound like Cassandra sometimes,” I comment, unsure of why I’m telling her any of that now.
“What?”
The tips of my ears start to burn.
“You both have this silly habit of making your voices sound higher at the end of your sentences,” I explain, feeling a little embarrassed about it.
Angelina blinks, caught off guard. Her freshly cut bangs fall over her face, hiding her expression from me. She pulls them back, tucking the strands behind her ears.
“Cassandra Rivera?”
“Yeah.”
“You two have been talking?”
“Not really.” I shift gears, the wheel smoothly turning left beneath my hands. “But I see her walking around sometimes. It’s kind of hard to avoid Cassandra entirely when she’s my neighbor.”
Angelina makes a small, non-committal sound, “Ah.”
I glance at her. “What was that?”
“What was what?”
I scoff. “That sound you just made.”
“I didn’t make any sound,” Angelina retorts with a pout, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Yes.” I raise an eyebrow. “You just did.”
She inhales sharply, eyes flickering to me. “It’s just… I just feel like everyone’s been tiptoeing around me lately. It’s like they’re just waiting for me to flip out. But you know who didn’t?”
“Let me take a wild guess.” I clear my throat, already knowing the answer. “Was it Cassandra?”
“She even called me a freak one time,” Angelina lets out a dry laugh, brief and brittle. “All because I tried to warn her about Caleb.”
Her first year of high school has always been a difficult topic to approach with Angelina. From what I’ve pieced together over the years, a boy hurt her badly. Lucia wouldn’t tell me the details, no matter how many times I asked her to. And now, sitting beside me, Angelina is giving me the full story. I grip the wheel a little harder, absorbing every word.
Caleb Monteiro was the boy.
“Didn’t Lucia warn you off about him too?” I say, keeping my voice as light as it can be. I know my sister must have made very similar complaints to the ones Angelina is making just now. “And did you listen?”
